Pump Jacks for Dummies

pump jack

It's been a while since we woke up the staff petroleum geologist and handed him a DotD nominee to review. there's a reason for that: he gets pretty bitchy about the abject stupidity of most people when it comes to the science of petroleum exploration and production. Nevertheless, we risked his wrath today to get his thoughts about the Sciencing.com post "How Does an Oil Pump Jack Work," written by one Keith Dooley. Our geologist was not amused...

Contributors to eHow.com, which is where this post lived before Leaf Group¹ niched it over at Sciencing, were required to write an introduction 75 to 100 words long. That's where Dooley tripped himself up the first time:

"After the location has been drilled and the oil has been discovered, there has to be a way to remove it from the earth. The oil down in the earth will not just spurt up out of the hole ready to be collected. It is usually mixed with sand and rocks, and is sitting in a reservoir underground... After the hole is dug... a pumping station called a jack pump is put in place above the hole."

Mumble, mumble, mumble... First, has Keith never seen a picture of a "gusher"? Sure oil can "just spurt up out of the hole"! Companies don't want it to, though: it's dangerous, messy, and wastes money. Second, this crap about "mixed with sand and rocks"? What an idiot. Third, it's not a "jack pump," it's a pump jack. And last, what is it with all these pea-brains calling drilling "digging"?

Moving along from there, we took a break to inspect the quality of Dooley's prose. Here's an unedited sample:

"A pulley and gear system is turned by the engine which moves a counter weight [sic] connected to the leaver [sic]. The lever moves and is [sic] it does the counter weight swings around. When the counter weight gets to the top is [sic] helps the engine continue to move the lever through its momentum."

Fire that content editor! There are at least four grammatical mistakes in that passage, not to mention scientific inaccuracies and factual errors. But never mind all that... Here's how Keith thought a pump jack works:

"A pole is attached to the lever. The pole goes down into the hole. Attached to the pole is a sucker. The sucker pulls the oil out of the ground. It accomplishes this by the up and down movement of the lever creating a sucking motion."

Ummm, yeah: a "pole." The reality is that this "pole" (called a sucker rod) is inside a long string of pipe (it's hollow, Keith!) and there is a chamber with a ball valve at the bottom. Each time the rod moves up, the chamber opens and fills with fluid. When the rod moves down, the motion both closes the valve and forces the contents of the pipe to move upward. Idiot: it's not "sucking"!

Our guy also liked (not) Dooley's explanation of steam-assisted enhanced recovery:

"Steam is used in the other hole by pushing it down to create pressure that will help push the oil up out of the only other outlet."

That one sentence is so full of crap that there's not room to correct it here! So kiddies, when you want to know "How a Pump Jack Works," we strongly suggest that you ask someone who's seen one up close instead of a football coach like Dooley, our Dumbass of the Day, a guy who's probably never seen one except when driving past it on the interstate.

¹ Leaf Group is the new name of Demand Media Studios, the parent company of eHow. 

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